The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent Movie Review — Sucharita Tyagi
Quite a movie this is.
Hey y’all, welcome back! For today’s movie review, we’re talking about the Nic Cage starrer, hilariously titled “The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent”, now in movie theatres.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Esw92Iz1ID
QNic Cage plays himself in this ridiculous film, maaney he’s an aging movie star, close to being irrelevant because his inner voice won't let him accept that the world might have moved on to different things. A narcissist who is his own biggest cheerleader is forced to accept a birthday party invite because he needs those million dollars. Except when he gets to Mallorca, the party is more than what meets the eye.
An eccentric billionaire with a movie screenplay is perhaps the face of a giant drug cartel. Will Nic be able to escape, will he finally get the movie he’s been waiting for?
Self-awareness is a wonderful thing, especially when demonstrated by people far removed from the realities of everyday life. A drunk Nic Cage hallucinates a younger version of himself reminding the middle-aged him, that he’s Nic fuckin cage, a movie star not an actor, and then proceeds to make out with himself, writer-director Tom Gormican is presenting us with an insight into the borderline split personality disorder the famous perhaps deal with.
A part of them aware of their increasing unimportance, and yet having to convince themselves that glory is still not lost, kyunki its too easy for them to fall into despair aur phir sab khatam. Like a shark, they must keep swimming even when asleep. So movie star Nic Cage prides himself on things like hitting the high notes of a song playing in his car, living in a hotel, ignoring his mounting debt, but also is chasing a filmmaker to cast him in a movie about the “power struggle to fight for relevance”. He’s too smart to not know how things are changing, but he’s also too Nic Cage to surrender to it.
This is not a new territory being explored movie-wise, the man behind the movie star and if they stand up to the myth around them, recently brought to screen SO wonderfully by Vikramaditya Motwane in “AK vs AK”. A film with a completely different tone and style, but many similarities with “The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent.” An aging action movie star, forced to confront his normie-ness when his family is in danger, all the while a movie is being written parallelly.
Tom Gormican continuously references the very movie Nic Cage and Pedro Pascal are in, as the screenplay unfolds, going as far as talking about the third act right before the third act begins, its weird and amusing, written very cleverly, and all of it stemming from a pure love for film making, bending rules, subverting genres going off on a tangent but coming back to the emotion at the center of it all, the magic of cinema and the power of storytelling. Putting the motion in the motion picture, many many scenes see movement, action, walking running fighting, giving the film a continuous pace, easy to trod along with.
Pedro Pascal is ‘Javi’, the billionaire slash Nic Cage super fan slash screenwriter slash potential mafioso. At one point his cousin calls him Javi Ford Copolla another tie-in to Nic Cage’s real life, who’s Francis Ford Coppola’s nephew. Javi’s life is stranger than fiction and seamlessly blends into this weird movie the real Nic Cage is a now a part of. Pedro Pascal is having so much fun with this, a world where HE is the stranger jiske baare mein dheerey dheerey we find out, kyunki Nic Cage ke around bubble gets burst withing the first few sequences and uske baarey mein toh you know kuch second layer hai nahi narcissism ke neechey khaas. Now Javi’s life is the movie, he’s the mysterious main character, the star in a castle on an island.
Movies and shows with subjects that focus on primarily breaking down the very universe they exist in is a fav genre of mine. This one talks about movie-making, “The Boys” on Amazon Prime, jiska naya season bass aane walaa hai, talks about manufacturing superheroes for capitalism, and yeh bhi naya nahi hai, “The Truman Show ”did its own incredible version of this back when the Shahrukh Khan starrer “FAN” even made a solid attempt.
Cutting larger-than-life figures down to size is always enjoyable to watch if done kindly with the right intention and craft. The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent doesn’t go QUITE all the way there, it swims around in meta waters for a long time, but heads back home a little too safely, never fully dismantling the illusion of a movie star to really drive home the vacuousness of it all.
But, watch this movie in theatres for a fantastic Nicolas Cage performance, Pedro Pascal enjoying himself as much as the international location would let him. Tiffany Haddish doesn’t have a whole lot to do sadly, but she’s looking uh-mazing toh woh bhi sahi hai.
Now for, Relation Mein Recommendation.
Matt Le Blanc who you know as ‘Joey’ from “FRIENDS” won his first and only Golden Globe award, not for FRIENDS but for a show called “Episodes”, where he played a fictional version of himself. A TV star who is struggling to learn to work with new people on a new sitcom after the failure of his show ‘Joey’. 5 seasons spread out over 41 episodes, it is such a fun, warm, happy British-American show, must-watch if you can find it somewhere.
This week we’re also talking about the Shahid Kapoor starrer “Jersey”, subscribe to my youtube channel toh phir kartey hain uska bhi review.
